Critically Endangered
Hooded Grebe
Podiceps gallardoi
The hooded grebe is a medium-sized grebe found in the southern region of Argentina.
Appearance
It grows to about 32 cm (13 in) in length, and is black and white in color.
Published measurements include mass about 515.
Range and habitat
The hooded grebe can be found in basaltic lakes during the breeding season. Each year, the Hooded Grebe alternates that basaltic lake it uses for the breeding season. Its decision is based on the size, water level, and abundance of aquatic plants at each lake.
Laguna Los Escarchados (the site where the species was discovered in 1974) was declared a reserve in 1979, but hold only a marginal population.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
During the breeding season the hooded grebe is found on basaltic lakes in the Patagonian steppes at elevations of 500–1,200 m. Both saline and bitter salt lakes are used by non breeding flocks and some birds that winter on the coast of Argentina.
The grebe requires aquatic vegetation in its breeding lakes (primarily Myriophyllum elatinoides) that it uses to build its nest. The vegetation is also the habitat of the aquatic invertebrates on that the hooded grebe feeds.
In crisis
In 2012 IUCN uplisted the species from Endangered to Critically Endangered. As most of the grebe population is currently in the Buenos Aires plateau the grebe is under serious threat by the mink. In 1997 the total population size was estimated at 3,000-5,000 individuals, with roughly half being on Meseta de Strobel, a high-altitude basaltic plateau in the remote Patagonian steppes of Santa Cruz.
The population size was estimated by O'Donnell and Fjeldsa (1997) to consist of 3,000-5,000 individuals. Even so, recent winter counts deduced that the minimum population size was 759 in 2010/2011.
Hooded Grebe is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Hooded Grebe, Wikidata item Q874711. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
